Daniel Monaghan Email & Phone Number

Outdoor Psychotherapy/Counselling is a simple yet very effective way to help regulate our mind and body. Our mind and body are connected and both deserve equal care and attention. This is the main reason I combine my counselling work with the natural world, it heps us to heal. When I walk outdoors or sit on a bench with a client, its not just the two of us, Nature is there, all around us, to be observed and admired, going about its business naturally. We have so much to learn from nature, if we'd just take a little time to pause and be at one with it, we can, in time come to realise that nature never rushes anything. Outdoor work also takes the hierarchical aspect out of the equation. It is two people out for a stroll talking about lifes ups and downs, or simply taking in our surroundings without judgement or pressure to talk and fill every silence, silence can be good and calming, it allows us to really listen and take in the sounds of nature, and these sounds change throughout the year. The seasons are another great example of how nature works and blends seamlessly from one to the next. It shows us that through the changing seasons it has time to nourish and grow in spring, prosopur and flourish throughout the summer and early autum and then it knows instinctively when to start slowing down and get ready for the restful months of winter. Humans seem to be losing that natural instinct to listen to our minds and bodies when something isn't quite right, we push through and hope it will go away by itself. We seem to thrive on denial. The fresh air and open spaces of the great outdoors may be just whats needed after a day spent indoors. We all live in boxes and the majority of us also work in a box of some sort or another, and we can easily forget about our great outdoors. Studies have found that in Europe and North America we now spend up to 90% of our time indoors and we have been termed, an indoor species. We sadly seem to be loosing our connection with the natural world and I personally am deeply disturbed by these findings. I will continue to help one client at a time to reconnect with nature and start exploring the natural wonders around them. Since the early ninties I have been a tiling contractor and the majority of the work was and still is indoors, and although I love the work and the great degree of job satisfaction, I was never fully content. I am happiest in nature and I believe that this has stemmed from my childhood where I would spend every waking hour outdoors, on my grandad and uncles farms and on the bog footing turf. Truly freeing.